Generally speaking, I’m a big fan of travel diary comics.Â The artist goes to some place that I’ve (almost always) never been to, and I’m all for the occasional vicarious trip to a strange land.Â The thing is that often, when you’re sketching out what you’re seeing and putting your thoughts down in a travel diary, things can turn out sloppy as hell, and it’s best to clean it up a bit before putting a comic out.Â Ryan’s art isn’t the problem here at all; the sketchy, casual feel is perfect for this sort of thing.Â The trouble comes up when I can’t read whatever the hell it is he’s trying to say.Â His handwriting (and I can feel my glass house crumbling around me as I type this) is awful.Â It has a tendency to clump, making it appear that he’s throwing a cursive word or two in among the printing, which just makes the whole thing tougher to interpret, which is tough enough when you’re reading about a foreign place and most of your mooring are already gone.Â So, to make a long point just a little bit shorter: proceed with caution.Â I’ve gone at such length because it’s a damned shame.Â I’ve long wondered just what Hiroshima is like these days, what with us utterly destroying it 64 years ago and all.Â Here’s what I took from this comic: the impressive state of the trains, how polite everybody is with their fractured Japanese, the variety of foods, the awkward karaoke, the majesty of the trees, the architecture, the many wandering cats, how even the bums are nicer than here, the Atom Bomb Dome, and the horrific dog monsters.Â Clearly I still got a lot out of this comic, it’s that trying to read it may make you a little crazy.Â Check out his Two Eyes of the Beautiful first, then make your way back to this one.Â Or just check bits of this out on his website and see for yourself…Â $5